BRYAN W. ALASPA

This is the story of The Wraith. What the heck is The Wraith? The Wraith is a supernatural suspense/horror novel I wrote about a year or two ago. It's right here on my computer, in my drive, fully written in first draft form. It is, however, a novel that I have no intention of releasing anytime soon. You see, this is the thing I think young authors should understand. Sometimes, you have to be your own harshest critic and if you are going to be a self-published author, you nee

I have been self-publishing for a while. Of course, there is part of me that wishes I could be everywhere, but I was messing with self-publishing before there were ebooks. I was doing Print on Demand publishing back in the late 90s and jumped on the idea of e-publishing even before there was a Kindle. For me, I always felt that ebooks were the future of reading and publishing, but there is still the thrill of holding a physical print copy of your book in your hands. There are

As an independent writer, you probably know that one of the things you need to do is market your books yourself. I bet you, like me, have seen all kinds of videos and classes that claim to have the magic tool that will net you hundreds of readers that will buy hundreds of copies of your new book and send you down the path to selling millions of copies and earning you a six-figure income. I bet you, like me, have seen that email newsletters are the way to go. Oh! Just give awa

I think one of the things that surprise people is that I am not a full-time author. Sure, I have more than 30 books and novels out there. They do OK as far as sales, but there are people out there who do this as an indie writer full time and sell hundreds of books a day. I am not one of them. So, yes I have a day job. I long for the day when I can write my books and do nothing else, but that day is not here and it may never be. I think if you are a writer considering bypassin

One of the things that you are going to have to do when you decide to self-publish is use social media. Get over your fear of Facebook and Twitter and learn how to use them. Those are the ones that I use the most and I have done some actual experiments where I did not post my links to my various books to Twitter and found that sales have gone down. You will hear a lot of people talk about all of the other areas and things you need to do. You'll hear about email lists and send

It's one of the questions that you get asked when you tell someone that you are a writer and that you write books, a lot more often than you might think. The conversation goes something like this: PERSON: So, what do you do? ME: Oh, I'm a writer. PERSON: Oh, what do you write? ME: Well, I write for a company. Website content and blog, but I also write books. PERSON (really interested now): Really? What kind of books? ME: All kinds. Horror, suspense, thrillers, mystery and det

It's a funny thing, being a fiction writer. There are a lot of things that you can work out by writing about them. I am here to tell you that it is very therapeutic. If you are angry, or have an enemy, the last hing you should do is reach for that gun you got at the store down the street. Instead, pick up a pen and a piece of paper and write it all out. That even includes murder. Probably the bestselling novel I have out there is RIG. It's a novel about a demon-possessed oil

I am doing another stop today on author Mary Fan's website. She was kind enough allow me to do a guest post on her site. I discuss the challenges of writing a series, for all of you writers out there who want to do that. I have just released the second novel in my series The Elementals. Check out the post HERE and be sure to check out my new novel The Lord of Winter: Elementals Part Two. #guestpost #blogtour #LordofWinter #youngadult #series #writing #tips #advice

When I first got the idea for my novel, Sapphire, I had no intention of making it a YA story. I had been watching a TV show about ghost stories and saw a tale about a "vanishing hitchhiker" that I really liked. I liked the tale of the ghostly girl, but then imagined what it would be like for a nerdy, lonely kid to be the one who had the date with the ghost. I incorporated elements of the story I saw into the tale, embellished it, conjured a backstory and changed the name (I b

It is one of the questions I get asked: Why do you write? This is especially true when people find out that my books, novels and stories do not fund me enough so that I can do it full time. They wonder what the hell I'm doing writing blog posts about mice, rats and bugs or writing website content for a pest control company. They thinkt that having 30 books out there should be enough for me to live on. That's cute, but you can't do that in a city like Chicago. I have had frien